Are your friends blessed with the Awesomeness Development & Happiness Directive? How do you tell? How do you tell them? And how can you help?
Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven
OK, parents, raise your hand if you have a friend who’s got a kid who is, you know, all those special things ADHD kids are, and of course so is your friend (which is probably why she is your friend, because you like the interesting ones), and you don’t exactly feel like you can say to her, “I bet you have ADHD,” because she is just like you were: She held things together.
You don’t exactly feel like you can say to her, “I bet you have ADHD,” because she is just like you were: She held things together.
— Kristen Caven
What will probably happen, though, is that by 9th or 10th grade she will be baffled by the fact her brilliant child is failing, and she will go through the same agonizing diagnostic process you did with your kid, and then find out she is in Holland, so to speak, and then go get herself figured out as well, just like you did. And then you will have another ADHD buddy!
But. You have ADHD and it’s really hard to be patient, and you hate to see your friend struggle like you did, and you want to blurt things out.
So. If you are one of the readers who raised your hand in the first paragraph, maybe you will like this secret test you can use on the sly. It’s much less confusing than the clinical tests, which ask you all sorts of irrelevant things.
1. Do you have an amazing ability to focus? Do you have an amazing intelligence that can power through a problem? Do you give things 1000%?
2. Are you happy in a highly stimulating environment where you can switch your intense focus from one person to the next, or one thing to the next? Do you feel alive when people or things are coming at you and you are connecting with each one and moving it on its way? Like at parties, in sports, or in jobs where things are never dull?
3. But you also get spaced out or overwhelmed, too?
4. Do you miss appointments sometimes? Or show up really late? (I know you do, because it’s happened to me.)
5. Is reading hard sometimes? Do you start reading and get distracted? Would you rather skim and surf and text?
6. Do you hate following directions; you’d rather figure it out on your own?
7. When you are done with one thing and into another, does that first thing fall off your radar?
8. Do you feel like a superhero sometimes? Do you think of others as mere mortals, sometimes, when you recognize how unusual these skills are? Do other people see this and think you are amazing? Or do other people find you incredibly annoying?
9. Do you have powers of observation that others don’t? Does your associative mind make you see all angles that others are missing?
10. Do people sometimes think you are a jerk? In spite of the fact you are so awesome?
11. Are you a notoriously bad sleeper?
12. Are you allergic to paperwork?
13. In yoga class, does your mind just keep clicking along when you are in savasana? Do you get your best thinking done when you’re supposed to be doing something else? Like, um, going to sleep? Do you work things out in your mind while having sex?
14. On the computer, do you work best when you have five programs running? Can you pull together a meal easily with four pots on the fire? Are you a brilliant networker, get-it-don-er, or social media natural, even though your links don't always work? Do you have more than one best friend?
15. Do you have those days when dropping one ball causes a domino effect? Or those days when you just can’t seem to get in the flow? When your mind is skipping like a scratched record or CD? Do you have those days when everything you try to do requires you to do three things first? Do you sometimes find yourself going in circles?
Now, when you are slyly administering this test, maybe one question at a time, your friend will think nothing of it, because that’s just who she is. After a while, if she answers yes to most of them, you can pretend to suddenly discover this blog and send her the link.
And at the bottom of this blog there is a link to a “real” ADHD test. And then you can teach them the secret handshake!
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